Nissan has a handful of not so happy Leaf electric vehicle owners in the state of Arizona. The hotter the environment, the less drive time an electric vehicle's batteries can offer. Nissan has been catching significant flak over allegations that the battery packs in some of its Leaf EV's in the state of Arizona are having issues.

In July of 2012, Nissan dealerships in the state of Arizona started taking $5,000 off the sticker price of the electric Leaf vehicle to sell the cars. Several Leaf owners in Arizona began complaining that the electric vehicles were losing significant battery capacity due to the hot environment.

Leaf owner Scott Yarosh said, "When I first purchased the vehicle, I could drive to and from work on a single charge, approximately 90 miles round trip. [Now] I can drive approximately 44 miles on this without having to stop and charge."

I Nissan's Carla Bailo, senior VP of research and development, stepped up and addressed Leaf owners in an open letter posted to the Leaf community at the MyNissanLeaf discussion forum. According to the open letter, several Leaf EVs were inspected in Arizona and were determined to be operating to specification and the battery capacity loss over time is consistent with their usage and the operating environment. Nissan declared no defects are found in these vehicles.

The letter also states, "A small number of Nissan Leaf owners in Arizona are experiencing a greater than average battery capacity loss due to their unique usage cycle, which includes operating mileages that are higher than average in a high-temperature environment over a short period of time."

It sounds like what Nissan is saying is that losing significant driving range is normal. Most owners of the Leaf EV are going to have a hard time stomaching that claim.

Nissan has also promised more open communication with owners of the Leaf EV. The company created an independent global advisory board, headed by EV advocate Chelsea Sexton to help with customer communications and advise Nissan on strategy.

Nissan has promised that the 2013 Leaf will have a longer driving range.

$7500 tax credit , which may or may not result in $7500 in your pocket (most likely not).What strikes me as crazy is spending (even including the tax credit and this extra $5000 off) OVER $24K on a car that is basically the same as a $11000 nissan Versa, only you can only drive it 90 miles (yeah, right) between charges and you are looking at huge costs to replace the battery after a lot less miles of usage than an ICE. That over $13K that I saved by buying the ICE equivalent will buy a LOT of gas. Like the Volt owners commercial "I never have to buy gas" or "I only buy gas once a month".. true I'm sure, but you paid for your gas up front when you paid almost $40K for a non-ICE version of a $19K Cruze... again the $21K saved buys me a LOT of gas. Heck, if I had $40K to spend on a vehicle, it sure wouldn't be on a car based on a $19k car but with batteries and electric motor.Battery vehicles time will come, but not yet.

a tax credit is directly to the person's pocket. Yes, they do get $7500. Even if they owe taxes otherwise, this would go toward that owed tax and pay them the remainder. Examples of this are the electric and hybrid vehicle tax credits and education tax credits. (I know this because I had education tax credits for the last three years.)

A tax write off is just a reduction of the taxable income, meaning it would be anywhere from 15 to 39% of that amount as the actual money they would have reduced on their taxes paid. Examples of this would be charitable contributions and mortgage interest.

quote: a tax credit is directly to the person's pocket. Yes, they do get $7500. Even if they owe taxes otherwise, this would go toward that owed tax and pay them the remainder.

You don't get money in your pocket from tax credits. You get a reduction in tax liability . If you owe $7500 or less in taxes, you can apply the credit towards that amount. You NEVER get ANY cash!!! This is NOT a rebate.

The EV tax credit never ends up with the gov't paying you anything, the best you can end up with is $0 tax liability. So, if you don't earn enough to owe the feds $7500, or you have a bunch of deductions or other credits, you may not qualify for all $7500 of the credit, and there is no carryforward either.

I wish I was wrong, honestly. I know for certain that a person getting either the electric/hybrid vehicle credit or the education credit will get that extra money in the form of a tax refund.

Take a certain person who both went to college (finishing a pre-law degree) and got an electric vehicle. Without the tax credits, he would have qualified for $813 as a tax refund. With these two credits, he got a $10,813 tax refund, and ended up with paying an actual amount to federal taxes of a whole $13 for the year. Essentially paying a tax rate of less than 0.1%. This Democrat lovin hippie (a certain cousin of mine) bragged about it for months, and about how good the government was to the people and the environment.

That's not a tax CREDIT, that's a rebate. Two difference things. Sorry dude but tax credits NEVER give you cash. PERIOD!!! There ARE rebates on EV's in certain states. Look it up! The IRS's website explains how tax credits work. You can even look up how the individual credits work (some you can carry over to the following year).

Regardless of which is correct, the fact is $7500 is lost in Tax revenue. Which is the point, every one of these POS cars cost the tax payer money. Be it from a refund or lost revenue, it still costs us money.

Please say you're kidding. Have you ever seen how badly people DRIVE in Detroit? Let alone let them FLY?!?

If they ever make that type of vehicle I'm gonna reinforce my f*#(ing roof for sure. While googles self-driving demos are impressive, I'm not sure I'm willing to have some idiot land on my head with an out of control air-car.

Don't drag the volt into this. Have you ever driven a Chevy Volt? I spent a day tooling around in one... Seriously, to anyone who has driven a Volt, you sound like a moron when you compare a Cruze to a Volt... It has more right being called a Cadillac Volt as opposed to a Chevy Volt. Fit, finish, trim, etc. The Cruze is no where even close.

Further, the fact that it has an ICE inside of it kinda debases your claim that it is a non-ICE version of the Cruze... Sigh.

Bash away at government subsidies all you want, but unless you have a a slight fraction of a morsel of a particle of a clue about the Volt, don't slam it till you've driven one. Its a really nice f**king car, and like most halo products its expensive but a damn impressive tech demo. If I could've gotten a better financing rate out of GM (they don't do 0.9% on Volts. no incentives, nothing) I'd have gone that way over the TDI I bought instead.

*note: I used to just like the Volt from a tech side of things, then decided I had to go and use it to see for myself. I totally recommend finding a GM dealer and just having fun for an afternoon with one. We drove 30km on like 1/4 of its electric range, and in sport mode it pulls like a mofo. The leaf is a piece of garbage in comparison.

I'd wager that most foreign car lovers haven't driven a modern domestic car lately to see the drastic change in quality. It's always the typical, well I had a Ford Pinto once, so I'll never own a Detroit car again.

Or that most Apple fanboys haven't touched an Android phone (and vice versa) and want to criticize the others choice just because it doesn't line up with their "winning" team.

I could go on, but you're right. The Volt is really nice. I was once on a waiting list for one, and then dropped off when the official announcement was made. Went from decent styling to bland mobile. But after driving one, I was pretty impressed at how tight the entire package was. Anyone thinking it's an expensive Cruze has no idea what they are talking about (just like those who think an EVO is an expensive Lancer). And the automotive press agrees, awarding the Volt more awards than any other car last year.

Yeah the price is high, and can't be justified by many. I'll concede that point.

The Volt could be the best damn driving car out there, and it still has a problem.

I'm not disbuting the fact that it might be a good/fun car to drive.

Here's the problem. It has batteries that will propell it about 35 miles, let's not get into the range debate. So if you only drive a few miles in town, you don't need gas. Everyone gets this.

If you drive farther the gas engine starts and this propels you down the road, let's not get into the debate about driving by engine or battery power AFTER battery depletion.

So if you drive a lot, and you get over 35 miles the Volt really doesn't benefit you since on gas power you get about 35mpg. (do we need the exact number?) If you drive farther than 35 miles you don't really get the beenfit of NOT needing/using gas.

So there really is a small niche of drivers that benefit from this EV/hybid called the Volt. AND they threw a lot of luxury items at it and made the price "seem" fair.

But it's over priced at best as layed out by other posters on here. Your better off buying the Cruise and paying for the gas needed and pocketing the money you saving by not buying the OVER priced Volt.

AS well as the problems of using the Volt in the high heat and the freezing temps. Maybe you think they have this figured out, but I know at -30°F that battery pack will not go 35 miles and do it everyday!

Add in the fact that the govt is giving tax breaks as well, and it's been pointed out that the majority of Volt buyers have incomes OVER $150,000 - you see WHY people pick on it and yet the PR machine tries and keeps the Volt name in the news as often as they can to sell the damn thing!

Very true. My brother in law bought a Cruze, it's a pretty nice car and it gets 30-40mpg (1.6 turbo I believe so it scoots pretty well).

Assuming he drives 20k miles a year and stays off the turbo he is paying $500-700 a year for gas. Assuming 40k for the Volt, $7500 tax credit, $33000 out the door, it would take him on average 15 years to recoup the price difference (at $4/gal).

In that regard, it's much like the solar power debacle. Why spend $20k on a system that wont recover the costs until it needs replacing? You're not any better off, and the key to any really effective green tech is that it MUST be somewhat affordable to drive wide scale adoption.